Lilitu The Delores Lesion

Hey, I remember you.

Picture it: New Jersey, 1998. Somehow, a curious little demo tape from a band down in Georgia has found its way north. That band? Well, if it wasn’t Lilitu then this was a pretty stupid introduction.

I’d only recently discovered “The Gothenburg” sound made famous by Swedish death metal bands like In Flames, Dark Tranquility and Soilwork and Lilitu, though not Swedish, sounded about as close as an American band could expect to get. Add to that a crisp production and I was hooked.

Though the two-song demo tape is long gone, the band remains. Well, at least one member, founder and vocalist/guitarist Derek Bonner. And, even with a different band behind him, Lilitu’s sound is very similar... maybe too similar.

Although I thoroughly enjoyed said demo tape, I remember thinking how damn similar they sounded to In Flames. Bonner’s frenetic shrieks immediately bring to mind Anders Frieden’s during that time and whole guitar leads and solos are pure, unadulterated mid-90s ‘Flames.

Still, that does not keep me from enjoying the album. Like eight years ago, I have to give the band credit for putting together an enjoyable body of work. Songs like “Only the end of the World Again”, the opening killer track in the vein of Arch Enemy and “Even the Vultures Have Moved On (A Tragic Love Story)” have enough catchy melodic hooks, in part through a cool keyboard sound and smatterings of clean male and female voices, to keep bringing listeners back.

Unfortunately, despite being less than forty minutes in length, the band’s formula begins to wear thin by the end. Still, fans of any band mentioned in this review might want to at least give this a try. At the end of the day, Lilitu’s “The Delores Lesion” is a solid album from a considerably talented band, but might be about as far from original as the band is from Sweden.